


The Great Debate

by glassfrog



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Sex, Awkwardness, Bickering, Drama & Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Slice of Life, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25191832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassfrog/pseuds/glassfrog
Summary: 1920s historical AU. Hermann is a spurned scientist exiled to the German countryside to carry out a project earmarked for failure. Newton is a disgraced ex-prodigy and political nuisance serving a ten year sentence for desertion on a nearby farm. They have strong opinions about each other.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 30
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story contains references to a number of things you'd expect from a 1920s historical AU, including homophobia, ableism and antisemitism.

Everything was changing in Germany, but Dr Hermann Gottlieb’s work had stagnated.

It was 1924 and most of the good people in the country were poor, with few exceptions being made for middle-class academics. Hermann was living in the loft of an eighteenth century boarding house currently occupied by only himself and the landlady, Martha, who had expanded her living quarters across three rooms on the ground floor after the war. Hermann had free reign of the upper rooms and an airy loft with sloping walls that spanned the full length of the house.

He was researching the possible existence of ripples in the fabric of time and space: a difficult subject, and one that he intended to prove. His studies were funded by a grant provided by the government and the Technical University of Munich. He had borrowed some of his equipment from the university’s mathematics, science and engineering department. The rest, he had simply taken.

Hermann came from a family of scientists. He had a PhD in engineering and applied sciences, which he had studied in Berlin, and then abroad in Cambridge, England, and he considered himself to be a stalwart of logic and good ideas. Nonetheless, he championed theories that were thought of as ‘crackpot’ by the Board of Scientific Guardians, who exercised a great deal of power in the world of academia at the time.

The boarding house he was staying in sat almost midway along a winding dirt track between a sugar beet farm and a small village just outside Bad Kissingen. The owner of the farm, Herr Waldorf, was a widower, and could have been forty or sixty years old. His two-hundred acres were staffed primarily by convicts who had been given temporary housing in the village. Other than that, the settlement comprised of little more than a greengrocer, a barbershop, and a small cafe called the _Cuckoo’s Nest Snack Bar_ , which sold bottles of illicit alcohol that was brewed in a bathtub by the proprietor's two muscular daughters. Once or twice a week Herr Waldorf, who had a history with Martha, would send a labourer laden with wicker baskets filled with bread, biscuits, preserved meat, vegetables and tobacco up the dirt path to her house. The walk was steep and strenuous. Usually it was a scruffy teenage boy, a relative of Herr Waldorf’s, who made the delivery, and was rewarded by Martha with tea, a slice of fruit loaf, or a mug of beer. But one unseasonably warm day in late September, nine months into Hermann’s scientific excursion, it was a man who knocked three times on the door, a jaunty _rat-tatta-tat-tat._

He was about Hermann’s age, short, with a round face blotched with sand-coloured freckles under black-rimmed glasses as thick as the base of a milk bottle. He had unsightly stains on his blue shirt under each armpit, as well as on his chest, in a long, upside-down triangle that spread from his collar, which was unbuttoned, down to his waist. He traipsed clumps of mud across the kitchen floor as Hermann opened the door for him. “Special delivery,” he shouted, taking off the wicker backpack and dumping it on the kitchen table.

One of the convicts, Hermann presumed. Martha walked in with her wrinkled brow pulled smooth and tight by a set of hair rollers, which she had covered with a handkerchief, and stood aghast at the sight of the man and his muddy snail-trail. She could not abide mess or dirt of any kind. In her personal quarters she covered her furniture with white sheets and scrubbed the wooden floorboards until they squeaked. Hermann often heard her vigorously beating throw rugs and blankets in the yard beneath his window as he worked, and he was careful not to leave his makeshift laboratory with chalk dust on his clothes lest he be beaten as well.

“What are you doing in my house?” she said.

“I’m the delivery boy. Farmhand, chain-ganger, chief pack-horse, general dogsbody - you name it.” As the man spoke, Martha seized her mop like a weapon and began to scrub the floor around him. She scrubbed the tops of his muddy boots. Then she grabbed her feather duster and began to dust him about the shoulders, all the while he carried on talking: “I’m in the fields mostly, but I look after the pigs too. Amazing animals, really intelligent. Amazing social skills. I’m Newton, by the way, call me Newt. Can I have some water?”

Ever the gracious host, Martha said: “Of course. Would you like some bread and jam?”

Newton ate one slice, then helped himself to four more and a large mug of water while Martha watched with a pincushion smile and Hermann picked at his own lunch of stewed vegetables and a crusty roll.

“Are you going to eat that?” Newton said. Then he ate Hermann’s lunch.

“Hermann is my tenant. A doctor,” Martha said.

“I’m a doctor!” Newton-call-me-Newt exclaimed with his mouth full. “I was a biologist.”

Martha looked faint. Newt swiped a piece of fruit from the fruit bowl, put it in his pocket and departed, leaving the door squeaking on its hinges. Martha closed it behind him and began meticulously locking up, sliding two thick bolts shut with a bang and pocketing the key in an act of self-righteous indignation. “What a horrible little man. He cannot be Christian.” A Roman Catholic, Martha often used the word Christian to mean good, hard-working and honest.

“Geiszler is a Jewish name,” Hermann provided.

“He was looking at you strangely, didn’t you notice? He was giving you the evil eye.”

“A severe case of short-sightedness, I’d say.”

Martha said: “I don’t like having convicts up here. It unsettles my nerves. It’s not good for a woman my age, living alone. What if - God forbid! - he’d tried to have his way? I’d be quite powerless. A woman my age.”

“You have me here to protect you,” Hermann said.

“You’re sweet.”

She picked a punnet of rosy apples out of the hamper Newton had dumped on the kitchen table and polished each piece of fruit with her apron before placing them one by one in a ceramic bowl on the windowsill. “He was giving you the evil eye,” she said again. “I’ll tell Herr Waldorf not to send him again.”

But Newton did come again, huffing and puffing up the steep hill to Martha’s house with cumbersome parcels in tow, as the teenage relative of the old farmer had taken up a new job in Bad Kissingen. He was, Hermann learned, among a handful of anarchists, socialists, pacifists, religious minorities and other political troublemakers who had been handed lengthy prison sentences for desertion after refusing to take up arms during the Great War ten years ago. He had been transferred to Herr Waldorf’s farm in the back of a rickety moving van on probation some weeks ago, and had been put to work removing the weeds from the sugar beet fields. A doctor from an absurdly young age, he was twenty-four and studying for his third PhD - a strange one, focused on the study of the anatomy of sea creatures - when the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and subsequent outbreak of the war turned his mind to politics. For six months he made a spectacle of himself in furious newspaper articles, at town hall meetings, and on top of wooden crates outside Parliament with a megaphone. Once regarded as one of the most promising and precocious young scientists of the early twentieth century, he was disgraced, ridiculed, and blacklisted. His brain was as sharp as a razor, and he took a keen interest in Hermann’s work and everything he was doing wrong. He was more abrasive, more irritating, more impulsive and more rapacious than most of the scientists Hermann knew. He was also more attractive.

“I intend to make a good argument for the existence of gravitational waves. It’s really very simple. I theorise,” Hermann explained. “If I can find a way to detect these waves, and convince the Board of Scientific Guardians to fund it, it would create an entirely new way of studying the universe!”

“Those dinosaurs! Don’t tell me you joined that bunch of bureaucrats! How long’d they give you?”

“Not _yet,_ and two years.”

“Sycophant. I’d do it in one.”

It was Martha who, as ever, came to his rescue. She had never married, and at fifty years old was just beginning to enjoy her spinsterhood, as she felt she had finally reached an age where being a spinster was acceptable and no longer had to bite her tongue at insufferable men, or show them any politeness whatsoever. She found Newton very insufferable.

“You’ve a nerve, showing your face here after last time,” she snapped at him. ‘Last time’ was one week ago, when Newton, venturing into Hermann’s study, had picked up a stick of chalk and innocently solved a stubborn equation Hermann had been agonising over for more than a week, causing the mathematician to fly into a fury and hurl a wooden eraser at him. “Put the hamper on the table and be off with you. I won’t have you bothering him.”

“He wants me to bother him,” Newt boasted. “He likes it. My natural charm.”

“Charm, he says. You drive him batty, and who do you think has to listen to him bashing his books about in a rage all day?”

“I think I inspire him.”

“Leave the poor man alone. Can’t you see he’s deformed?”

Hermann emerged from behind the door, anxious about being the subject of gossip but trying not to show it.

“Outside, both of you,” Martha said, as if she expected a fist-fight to break out between Hermann with his limp and Newton with his diminutive stature and milk bottle-thick glasses. Still, the two men obediently made their way out into the yard, where they continued to bicker among the chickens and ducks. Hermann picked up a pail and went over to the chicken coop, and started collecting the pearly white and brown speckled eggs from the nests in the little wooden boxes with hinged lids that protruded from one side of the building. Newton, who was usually only interested in rowing about science, turned his attention to Hermann’s leg, the so-called deformity brought up by Martha in the kitchen minutes before. It was an old injury, one he had sustained during the war, resulting in a lop-sided gait and the need for a cane. People who looked five, ten years older than him often stood up on the tram to offer him their seats, which he would decline only once out of politeness before gratefully accepting.

“Does it hurt?” Newt asked.

“Only sometimes,” Hermann said. He had to set the pail down carefully on the dirt ground, open the hatches and collect the eggs one-handed. Newt joined him at the far end of the coop. He was more suited to manual work than Hermann, and looked the part in baggy overalls and a blue shirt with its top three buttons undone and sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His sunburn had faded into a rich, American-looking tan. Hermann watched his bare arms dipping in and out of the wooden boxes, taking out the eggs two at a time.

“Your nails are filthy. Don’t you ever wash?”

“You try sharing a bathroom with twelve other men. I’m dirtier coming out than going in,” Newt said. He had an American twang to his voice, too.

"Did you oppose the war on religious grounds?" Hermann asked. "Or was it a moral objection?"

"I don't see why those two things need to be mutually exclusive," Newt replied.

"I didn't think you were the faithful sort, that's all."

"I'm agnostic. I'm always open to a healthy debate about the existence of God.”

"How very Jewish of you," said Hermann drily. He added: "I'm an atheist, myself."

"I bet that makes you popular."

"I have no desire to be popular."

" _Really?_ "

“You’re no stranger to controversy yourself. Why _did_ you oppose the war so fervently?”

“That’s a big question. How long have you got?”

“Some would call you a coward.”

“Would you?”

“That depends,” Hermann said, “on your reasoning. I didn’t approve of the war, but it happened regardless, and with so many other young men taking up arms I thought - well, what right had I to refuse? What made my life any more valuable than theirs?”

“You were willing to die even though you had nothing worth dying for. That doesn’t make you brave, Hermann, that makes you an idiot.”

“You’re one to talk about throwing lives away. You should have kept your mouth shut instead of shouting and making a fuss all those years ago. You might’ve been declared unfit for national service with your eyesight. Now look at you. You’re a mess.”

“At least I didn’t shit all over my own beliefs supporting a phony war,” Newt said, hovering at a distance as if he anticipated an egg being thrown at his head.

“Well when you put it like that!” Hermann said. “I suppose you convinced legions of misguided youths!”

“I could convince you. I bet you I could. I’ve got a manifesto, two-hundred-and-fifty pages. _The War Racket: Trading Lives for Money in a Capitalist Dystopia_ by Dr Newt Geiszler. It’s a working title.”

“You’ve certainly had a lot of time on your hands.”

“Yeah. Eight years, actually.”

Newt made good on his promise to deliver his document, arriving late in the evening the following day after hours spent toiling in the fields. It was crumpled around the edges and tied up messily with a dirty string. Hermann picked it up grimly by two corners, as if it was something diseased. He read it in minute detail that night in a state of unease, as he was not used to the prospect of changing his mind on ethical questions, and stayed awake long after he would usually have gone to bed. When Newt returned the following week and slipped upstairs when Martha’s back was turned, Hermann placed the dog-eared papers, neatly tied with fresh twine, on the table in front of him. “Quite ferocious,” he said. “For a pacifist.”

“I’m not a pacifist.”

“You’re a radical. A political nuisance.”

“So are you, secretly,” Newt said, his eyes twinkling.

“I’m not the one in exile.”

“Aren’t you?” He looked about the loft.

“I did not embark on this study to make friends," Hermann snapped. "Nonetheless, I am confident I will prove my critics wrong. This is crucially important research, and if no one else has the - the _balls_ to do it, I will."

"I love it when you talk like that."

"I believe in my work, Dr Geiszler. Numbers. Figures. Facts! I will _seize_ this opportunity to produce something not even my staunchest critics can deny. If humanity wishes to unravel the utmost secrets of our universe, progress must come first.”

"The Board of Scientific Guardians doesn't see it that way."

"Idiots!" said Herman vehemently.

Newt regarded him with a knowing smirk. Heat prickled high on Hermann’s cheeks and under his collar. He said: “Your structure was sloppy. You have no regard for proper order. You’re desperate to show off all your ideas, you’re practically vomiting the words on the page.”

“Admit it,” Newt said. “I convinced you.”

Newt was a fearsome writer. His academic works were more poetry than prose, cascading scientific symphonies that captured Hermann’s attention and left him hungry for more. He stayed awake long into the night reading them by the light of an oil lamp.

Hermann said: “I prefer you in writing.”

“I know you do.” Newt picked up _The War Racket: Trading Lives for Money in a Capitalist Dystopia_ and put it in his basket. “I liked you better in writing too,” he said as he left, “by the way.”

Though Hermann did not know it yet, as he stewed bad-temperedly in his loft-shaped prison, the sights and smells and sounds he experienced during those two years spent in the lustrous German countryside would be forever coloured by Newton’s presence. The rustle of badly-kept papers, grass stains, freckles like stars on sunburned skin and the sound of the piano on the wireless creeping upstairs would always take him back to the long hours spent arguing with Newt over the line drawn in chalk on the loft’s wooden floor. He would find him years later in things he had forgotten, the pages of a book or the taste of a soup that Martha would make with the vegetables he delivered.

In the meantime he was content to listen to Martha complain about him, though he surmised early on that her dislike was different from his, in that it was mostly a general thing that she felt on principle because Newt was a coward and a criminal. Hermann’s own feelings burned deeper, and he found himself seeking out the former prodigy to bask in the disgrace that had befallen him. Newt took pleasure in antagonizing him, and it thrilled Hermann in turn that he was able to get under Newt’s skin like a hair under a vest.

Herr Waldorf, reddish in colour and still ploughing the fields himself behind a couple of horses in spite of a bad back and fingers turned lumpy and claw-like from arthritis, did not mind the loss of a single farmhand for an expanding number of hours each week. He had been receiving donations in the form of criminals on probation for several years and was content to leave the fifteen or so political prisoners to their own devices, working, playing and fighting - sometimes with fists - in exchange for decent profits and a hot meal at Martha’s kitchen table.

“Why do you insist on sending that horrible little man?" she asked him, dishing out braised meat and potatoes one day.

"Well it's as you say. He's little. Thought you'd feel more comfortable with a little'un."

"You know I don't like having convicts up here. It unnerves me."

"Not much of a threat with those big glasses, is he?"

"He might be. I'm an old woman, Harry. I'm not strong."

"You've got beefy arms," Herr Waldorf said. Martha clouted him on the ear. He guffawed. "See, there's life in the old girl yet!" Gesturing his bushy beard and eyebrows at Hermann, he added: "You’ve got nothing to worry about with the doctor here. Martha tells me you were a soldier."

"In a way," Hermann said vaguely.

"A fine fellow."

"I never actually saw battle."

"Would've signed up myself. Too old.”

Martha said: "Whatever could Hermann do, with his crippled leg?”

"You're welcome to gather your own groceries from now on. Long walk, mind."

“Har har! And you can mash your own potatoes and bake your own carrot cakes.”

Hermann said: “I don’t think you need worry about Herr Waldorf’s men. What are they - pacifists, Quakers, religious and political zealots? Peaceful protesters.”

“A stubborn bunch,” Herr Waldorf grunted, spilling peas and gravy onto his beard.

The conversation turned to politics. Martha voted conservatively with a sense of nostalgia for a desirable way of living which she had not experienced, but had heard of from friends and in newspaper columns. Herr Waldorf did not bother to vote.

“Hermann’s a liberal, aren’t you?” Martha said.

“I don’t consider myself a liberal.”

“What do you consider yourself then?”

“A scientist. I’m a scientist first and a politician second. I’ve never enjoyed lively debates. I can do more good with numbers.”

“Never enjoyed debates?” Martha said. “Well, I don’t believe that.”

She said that she would vote for the Centre Party in next month’s election, because she was a Catholic. Hermann recalled that Newt used to cast his vote with the communists before losing the right to do so due to his conviction. He made a mental note to challenge him on this: was his fierce dedication to political ideals worth the loss of a minimal, but meaningful say on the leadership of the country - especially as it had accomplished so very little?

In the end, in the December of 1924, the Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Reichstag. The country saw a wild shift in its number of far right-leaning voters, as the German National People's Party, led by steadfast monarchist Oskar Hergt and his band of merry reactionaries, continued to extend its creeping fingers into the nooks and crannies of German society. Hermann, who voted SDP out of sensibility, was dismayed to receive a letter from a respected colleague, one of the few who occasionally took the time to keep the good doctor informed of the day-to-day goings-on at the university, celebrating the ‘promising’ twenty per cent turn-out in favour of the nationals, and bemoaning the lacking leadership of its bald figurehead.

Dr Lars Gottlieb, respected founder of the Board of Scientific Guardians, leading physics and engineering scholar and outspoken supporter of the Great War, wrote a four page editorial denouncing his son’s work in _Spektrum der Wissenschaft_ magazine. _Not in recent memory can I recall a more catastrophic amalgamation of half-baked ideas than that of Gottlieb Jr’s,_ he wrote. _I can only assume that The Technical University of Berlin continues to provide funding for such frivolous flights of fancy as a sort of practical joke, which, given the state of the economy, is in very poor taste._

A week later, the university slashed Hermann’s budget in half. When Newt went up to meet him after scraping the pig pens he found him sweaty and agitated, surrounded by shreds of half-imagined reports, throwing things all over the place.

“Bad day?”

“Your perception astounds me,” Hermann snarled. “Ten years of my life I have dedicated to the advancement of scientific research, and to what end? Derision! Ridicule! My good name dragged through the mud in a libellous article! That man will stop at nothing to destroy me.”

He hurled the _Spektrum der Wissenschaft_ at Newt’s face.

“It’s not that awful,” he remarked.

“Not that awful! It’s sabotage, that’s what it is. For years - _years! -_ he tried to talk me out of the topic. He wrote it off as a fantasy, said I was destined for failure. Now he’s terrified I’m going to prove him wrong!” He threw a pile of books into his open suitcase in a rage. They bounced out of it and across the floor. He bent down and started packing them away properly.

“Are you leaving? Don’t go! What about your work?”

“What’s the point? The Board slashed my budget. There’s no way I could possibly reach a valuable conclusion in just six months. That’s _half_ the time I was supposed to have left.”

“You could always half your workload,” Newt suggested.

“Impossible,” Hermann snapped. “Do you realise how difficult it was to convince the Board to allow me to take the time to research this? They’d hardly be willing to spare another scientist. And I don’t know anybody else who would take it on.”

“You know me.”

“You?” Hermann said. “It would never work.”

“Why not?”

“Firstly, you’re no mathematician.”

“I’m a scientist. I was one of the best. I still am.”

“You’re a pig keeper. Worse. You’re an assistant pig keeper.”

“I’m throwing you a bone here. Look around Hermann, you’re not hot on options. I’m your only chance.”

The dark truth of his words penetrated Hermann’s brain and he was overcome with the hopeless urge to scream, cry and break things. "Damn it all!" he said. "I've had a miserable life!"

"Don't say that," Newt said. "It's not over yet. There might be worse yet to come."

"Shut up."

He wanted to throw Newt out of the house on the off chance it would make him feel better. Worse, he was tempted to take up his offer. When Newt picked up one of his earliest essays, written in January 1923, he did not snatch it away. Compelled to defend his work, he fumbled with his words, feeling increasingly embarrassed as Newt carried on reading for a long time. "It isn't finished. It's only a draft. It's not close to being finished. It's rather…"

"Rambling," Newt said.

"Yes, that's it."

"Hate the title. _Gravitational Waves: A Theory?_ Excuse me while I fall asleep. How about _Gravitational Waves: The Search for Gravity's Shadow?"_

"I'm writing a series of essays, not a Hollywood motion picture."

Newt was not paying attention. He had a glint in his eye that resembled mad genius. "Do you believe in aliens, Hermann?" he asked.

"Yes, hypothetically. Considering the infinite vastness of the universe… it seems statistically unlikely that ours would be the only planet capable of sustaining life."

“Hypothetically then, could this be used to detect alien activity?”

“That depends. I believe that gravitational waves could be used to observe large objects far beyond anything that can be seen from a telescope. As for extraterrestrial life, well, if its mass was great enough… yes, I don’t see why not.”

“That’s incredible,” Newt said, shining with delight.

Hermann snatched the piece of paper from under his nose. “I did not embark on this study with the intention of proving the existence of aliens. The subject of gravitational waves is controversial enough as it is.”

“When did you start thinking so _small?”_

“I mean to have a long scientific career. I’d prefer not to spend it as a laughing stock, thank you very much.”

“You used to be fun,” Newt said.

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“Didn’t.”

“Did!”

“Didn’t. Oh, for goodness sake! This is childish.”

Newt stuck his tongue out at him. Then he walked over to him and pressed the pile of essays to his chest, standing so close Hermann could feel the warmth of his bare arms. Hermann startled like a wild deer and back away with precision, so that Newt might not notice the blush rising in his cheeks.

“Hermann, my man,” Newt said, “let me help you.”

Hermann sneered. “You’re so American.”

“And you’re so annoyingly British. You’re scared to let yourself have anything you want. You’re repressed.”

The word sounded like an accusation and left Hermann scrambling for some deeper meaning, as one man did not typically call another repressed without meaning something by it. He feared Newt had perceived his reaction to the feel of his arms, and that his desire to repel him was motivated by more than a simple general dislike of human contact.

It was in these moments that Hermann felt seen by Newt. He increasingly felt as though something had been stripped from him and now lingered between them, ready to be used as a weapon against him. So far Newt had not decided to wield it, though Hermann sensed it would happen eventually. The waiting was torturous, as was not knowing whether, if Newt pushed, he would stand steadfast and unflinching - or yield. The more fiercely he told himself he would refuse to budge, the more he feared he would be willing to yield, and secretly hoped for Newt to shatter the silence that had surrounded them.

Desperate for a distraction, Hermann said the first thing that sprung to mind, which was: “Oh alright then, if you bloody well insist.”

“Awesome, when do I start?”

“Right now,” Hermann said, and intentionally burdened him with as many books as he could carry and instructed him icily to do his homework before sending him off with his back bent and knees buckling under the weight.

Later, Martha came in with two cups of tea and a plate of home-made bread spread thickly with jam. Hermann, who had consumed nothing that day but cups of gritty black coffee, ate two slices gratefully while Martha devoured the rest, staining the corners of her small slit of a mouth dark purple.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“I’m at an impasse with my work. I feel like I’ve come up against a great wall and I cannot surmount it.” He sighed. “I suppose I took it out on him.”

“You needn’t have him up here all hours of the day. Trailing muddy boots on my nice, clean carpet. He’s a horrible little man.”

“He’s so annoying. He drives me to distraction.”

“You’re sexually frustrated,” Martha provided. She regarded Hermann not as a bachelor but as a sort of male spinster and, as such, spoke to him as if woman to woman. “It’s not good for someone your age to be without sex for very long. You should come to Bad Kissingen with me one day. I could introduce you to some nice young ladies.”

“No thank you Martha.”

“Very discreet.”

“I don’t like nice young ladies,” Hermann said, and shut the door on her.

It was true, Hermann had never been successful with women. He had no ambition to be successful with them. That night, as he rummaged sleepily through his papers in his laboratory, he considered the three doomed romances of his recent youth. There had been Inge in his school days. She played the cornet in the town hall on Sundays, and wore her hair in two fat black plaits that stuck out about her ears, which were always frosty from the cold. When he had kissed her it was with the stoicism of a religious martyr, the tragic hero of a Renaissance painting brought to life. Inge opined herself similarly heroic for her time spent with Hermann. She possessed a warrior’s build with wide shoulders and strong, fat legs that rooted her firmly to the ground. She seemed to feel sorry for Hermann, who was comparatively scrawny, and seemed to be in need of a powerful, physical ally. He had a terrible premonition of being looked after by her his whole life, and deserted her.

His most recent romance, in his twenty-eighth year, came in the spiky form of Dora Schulte, the wife of Jan Schulte, who Hermann had known since childhood. He spent a long summer at their home in Berchtesgaden after the war, recuperating in a wicker chair piled high with cushions that they had placed on the balcony overlooking their rose garden, where he would often spy the couple wrapped in a vulgar embrace, one eye fixed upon each other, and the other sliding slyly towards him. He deduced their marriage was an unhappy one. Dora was heir to a handsome fortune, and was keen to see her husband make a name for himself in the tinned peaches business like her father, but Jan fancied himself an artist, and was fond of a drink. After waking past noon in a half-drunken haze, he would spend hours at an easel in the summer house, painting Mathilde and Margot and Marie, and any other pretty, plump young maid who was willing to sit for him. He quickly accused Hermann of trying to seduce his wife.

“I don’t think so Jan, no, definitely not,” Hermann had assured him one warm summer evening as he paced around the balcony, smoking furiously. “Besides, I hardly think Dora would be interested in a stuffy scientist, do you?”

“It’s your leg,” Jan, who was found unfit for national service on a wangle, raged. “Your damn leg. Girls love that sort of thing. It captivates them, Gotty, drives them wild. Girls love a war hero.”

“It was a German who shot me,” Hermann said. “An unfortunate accident.”

But Jan was too drunk to listen.

“You’re after my wife,” he said. He rolled up his sleeves as if to punch Herman, then appeared to think better of it and left. It was a feeble play-act, Hermann realised, a fantasy to distract themselves from their own miserable, empty lives which they were both too stupid to identify as such. For a while he entertained the fantasy, as it provided some reproach from the truth of his own sexuality, though he wondered why they had chosen him, a hunch-backed invalid, to play the role of Lothario. He began to suspect that they had detected his abnormality, that the truth of his sexuality alone had sparked the attraction, as they must have known, deep down, that he could never come between them. The thought tormented him, and he began to despise the young couple. One day, when they were occupied in the kitchen, banging the pots and pans about in one of their frequent, blazing rows, he gathered up his crutches and his suitcase and departed through the front door.

“What’ll I tell them?” asked one of the maids, who knew better than to venture too close when the Schultes were fighting.

“Tell them to go to hell,” Hermann replied.

And so his affair with Dora Schulte came to an end. In the months that followed, to anyone who would listen at dinner parties over glasses of wine, she could often be heard crying: "Dear Hermann, little Hermann! I broke his heart."

“I am an intellectual machine,” Hermann had theorised. This was a lie, though he sometimes wished it wasn’t so that the immeasurable weight of the shameful secret of his sexuality might be lifted from his shoulders.

There had been a time - a very brief, happy time - in his childhood when his proclivities were a source of excitement, approached with the same fervour as he would a complicated sum. When he was fourteen, his parents took him to see a doctor in a bright white sanatorium. There he sat cross-legged like a monkey puzzle while a tall doctor talked over the top of his head to his stone-faced parents. He had been born wrong. Feet-first and scrawny, with the cord wrapped around his neck. His very existence was an affront on the natural order of things. The doctor held a cold stethoscope to his bare chest and asked him a series of questions that Hermann, at fourteen years of age, considered prying. His diagnosis: that Hermann was fragile and susceptible to sickness. He was warned he must be careful not to become sick.

“The trick,” the doctor said, “is to not think about being sick. Think of yourself as perfectly normal.”

The instruction to ‘think of yourself as normal’ stuck with Hermann. It was then that he realised that not all boys felt about members of their own sex the way he did, and that a similar attraction to women would not blossom later, as he presumed it would. After all, normal people did not need to be instructed to think of themselves as such.

His most meaningful sexual experience had occurred when he was nineteen, when he found himself standing in silence under the weeping branches of a willow tree in Cambridge, side by side with a man he did not know. It was raining, as it often did in Great Britain. For the first time in his life Hermann felt a wave of excitement wash over him, a strange sensation that indicated the sudden discovery of sex. As he identified this new, all-encompassing emotion while watching the raindrops drip from the man’s reddish-gold hair, he was flooded with sorrow, knowing there was absolutely nothing to be done about it.

He had been going out with an English girl at the time; a budding academic with an interest in mathematics, which was unusual for a woman. Her name was Vanessa, and she was the only woman Hermann had ever ventured to sleep with. She had one or two other boyfriends that Hermann knew of. Eventually she decided to marry one of them.

  
  


Newt was a remarkably quick study; it was something he was proud of. Three days alone with Hermann’s essays, plus an array of books about astrophysics and cosmology, and he returned to the house caked in mud and straw from mucking out the pigs, eager to share the several strokes of genius that had come to him in the middle of the night. Hermann set him up a desk at the far side of the loft, which he abandoned often to present his own ideas, mess up Hermann’s notes or scribble on his blackboards. He was intellectually starved and Hermann had offered him a banquet. He leapt upon each topic like a cat upon a bird and played with each one until it was exhausted. They argued about everything, from the developing _The Intrepid Search for Gravitational Waves_ to Newt’s pencil-chewing habit, before dissolving into bitter silence - only to both start shouting again at the exact same time minutes later. Hermann put salt in Newt’s tea and Newt spilled it all over his desk and pretended it was an accident. After three hours, Martha burst through the door and cried that she couldn’t take it any more, and that she was checking into a health spa in the centre of town for the night, where guests were fed fresh grapes and given massages.

“Oh, shut up,” Hermann said to Newt before he had the chance to say anything. He took a roll of adhesive tape and applied it to the floor of the lab. “You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.”

They worked for three more hours in volatile silence, after which Hermann found, to his surprise, he had produced more work of substance than he had in weeks. The sun had set without either of them noticing, turning the loft a mild bluish colour.

“It’s _freezing_ in here,” Newt said, hugging himself.

“Don’t tell me you came here without a coat. It’s like Siberia out there.”

“So it’s decided then! Which room’s mine?”

“No. Absolutely not. Whatever would Martha say?”

“I could get hypothermia and die.”

“Don’t make promises you’re not prepared to keep.”

“I’m tired of being your dirty little secret Hermann. Don’t you want the whole world to know about us? I want to shout it from the rooftops!”

“There’s no _us,”_ Hermann snapped. “Every atom of my being is screaming against this.”

“Sounds like a ‘make yourself comfortable’.”

“Feckless idiot. To hell with it. Come downstairs, I’ll light a fire. What Martha doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Newt sat down in a meager green armchair that he did not quite fill while Hermann rolled up pieces of newspaper and threw them on the coal-burning fireplace on the far-side of the kitchen, which was set out like a shabby sitting room with a square of red carpet and a worn sofa. Hermann poured him a drop of bitter berry liqueur from a bottle that he’d received as a present a long time ago. Newt sniffed it apprehensively before downing it in one go.

“ _Ugh_.” He wrinkled his face, then lifted one hand, the hand holding the glass, and brandished it at Hermann.

“Go easy on it this time,” Hermann said, pouring him another. He poured himself a glass too, sank into the sofa and sipped delicately.

“Down it! Are you a German or aren’t you?”

“You can’t hold your alcohol.”

“I can,” Newt said, and drank his second glass just to prove it.

Within the hour, they were both drunk.

Hermann, who was not used to being drunk, mentally acknowledged his acquired inebriation, sank even further into the sofa and watched Newt with a fond smile on his face.

Newt’s cheeks and nose were red. "I'm drunk," he announced, mirroring Hermann's thoughts. "I haven't been drunk in what feels like forever."

"Another moral objection of yours?"

"No. Contraband. I haven't been drunk in ten years."

"That's a long time."

"It is," Newt said. "It is a long time."

He swirled his berry liqueur around and around in his glass and watched the flickering light of the fire shining through the dark purple liquid. Then he drank it down.

"Why did we stop, Hermann?" he asked. "Why did we stop writing to each other?"

It was a bold question, but it occurred to Hermann that Newton was trying to be tactful, in his own way, otherwise he would have asked 'why did you stop?' instead.

In the weeks and months following his accident, when the bullets of a bolt action rifle in the hands of an inexperienced private tore through his Achilles tendon and stripped a chunk of muscle irreparably away from the bone, Hermann found solace in Newton’s letters. From the confines of his hospital bed he pored over every word, from his trepidatious early typed notes to his passionate later projects, to his final letter sent in February, 1916.

_I've been drafted... Newton Geiszler to report for active military duty… Make an example of me… Over my dead body…_

One week later Hermann's platoon, the ten to twenty young men he had trained with, ate with, argued with and was ostracised from, were killed in an explosion outside of Verdun in France. Most of them died quickly, he heard. A small mercy. Others lingered.

Hermann was taken to another hospital in Berlin after that, where he spent a year learning how to walk again. Any letters Newt sent to his army address would have been returned unopened.

“I thought it was better I didn’t write,” Hermann said. “What use could you possibly have for a useless cripple like me?”

“I thought you were dead,” Newt said. “And what gets to me even now, what really makes my blood _boil,_ is that you let me think it. You let me think you were dead. D’you know where I was when I found out you were still alive? In a jail cell in Nuremberg, waiting for a man in a white coat to come and shine a light in my eyes, stick me with a needle and call me crazy. I read your article in _Bismarcks Hauspostille - In Defence of War by Dr H. Gottlieb._ Not your best work, Hermann, I’ve got to say. Even for you.” He was practically spitting into his empty glass.

“I set aside my personal feelings for the greater good. If you could only understand…”

“You _lied!_ You lied to everyone. You lied to _me.”_

“I’m sorry,” Hermann said helplessly. "What could I have done?"

"I didn't expect you to rescue me! No one was on my side. I was so alone. I needed my friend. And you abandoned me.”

Hermann said quietly: “It seemed easier that way.”

“ _What_ was easier?”

“Losing you.”

Newton looked at him with an unhappy marriage of pity and contempt.

“You were never going to talk about it, were you?” he said. “If I hadn’t brought it up, you’d have been just peachy pretending nothing ever happened. You hoped I wouldn’t recognise you. Did you really think I’d forgotten everything?”

“I couldn’t forget you either. Though I did try.”

“Did I look like how you imagined?”

Hermann had, in a fit of panic, thrown out all of Newton's letters, his pictures and the scraps of news articles bearing his name long ago. He had burned them on a small stove. He said: “The manure stains were a surprise.”

Newt laughed. “You don’t look anything like your picture. You looked so made-up in that black suit and tie. And the way you wrote, oh my God! I had you down as some tragic Victorian hero. You’re not though. You’ve got a bad temper. You get pit stains.”

“I do not!”

“I like it.”

“Have another drink.”

“Are you trying to get me hammered?”

Hermann tensed.

“Hey now,” Newt said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You think you know something about me. If we’re going to be working together, spending time together… You’d be within your rights to ask.”

“I don’t want to ask. I want you to tell me because you want to tell me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m on your side, Hermann,” Newt said. “I’ve got your back. I’ll fight for you. I wouldn’t fight for my country but I’ll fight for you.”

Hermann saw no trace of the usual wicked grin hidden in the corners of Newt’s mouth that made him wonder whether he was being made fun of. The liquor made his cheeks turn warm. “I-I see. Well that’s…” He coughed. “Thank you.”

Newt looked embarrassed in turn. “I’m still angry at you,” he said, defensively. Knowing that he had given Newt cause to be embarrassed made Hermann, in his drunken stupor, feel excited. He had never had the courage to make an attractive man blush before. He wanted to take the expression and bottle it. More than that, he wanted to be bold and shock him with a moment of naked honesty. He stood up with a sense of purpose, which caused Newt to leap to his feet as well in alarm. Hermann placed a hand on one of his shoulders and pressed his weight down upon it while tightening his fingers, his thumb nestled underneath his collarbone. He said, "Newton, I must speak emotionally. I have never been the type to take undue risks. I won't raise my head above the parapet. Every decision I have ever made has been calculated, and I am, and always have been, an exceedingly good mathematician. There is... solace, in certainty. But to be united with you now, after all these years, in my hour of need is something not even the most advanced scientific mind could have predicted. I don’t believe in fate. But here you are, you brilliant, baffling man.” 

“You didn’t want me here.”

“You’re right. I never wanted to see you again. How could I possibly face you after all these years?” Hermann said. “But now, I… I-I’m still…”

He let his hand drop to Newt’s chest and felt his heart pounding.

“You’re a terrible influence on me, Newton,” he whispered. “You make me want to take undue risks.”

Newt’s eyelashes cast long shadows down his cheeks. In the low light, with both of their long-kept emotions laid bare, it seemed only natural that Hermann should kiss him.

Instead, he said, “I’ve had rather too much to drink,” and smoothed down the front of Newt’s shirt with a nervous palm. “Goodnight Dr Geiszler."

“Goodnight Hermann.”


	2. Chapter 2

The new year brought fresh wind to Germany that carried with it the promise of change - new, exciting, ominous and foreboding. The whole country was caught in a whirlwind scandal. Dora Schulte, the doe-eyed socialite, had shot her husband Jan to death on the balcony of their Baroque-style home, and in doing so had captured the hearts of the German public. Affectionately branded ‘the Deadly Belle of Berchtesgaden’, she appeared in newspapers and gossip columns with her glossy black hair swept into a loose bun under the brim of her silk hat. Her trial was highly publicised. She was prone to fits of uncontrollable sobbing and even fainting in the dock. On the steps of the courthouse, flanked on either side by burly policemen, she was swarmed by paparazzi all eager to get a picture of the poor, privileged girl whose fortune had been frittered away by a slovenly husband, who lounged around in his loft filled with third-rate paintings and spent much time in the company of other women. In these pictures, Hermann detected in the corner of Dora’s eye the same giddy delight that had so often been turned on him as he sat, helpless, in the wicker chair the couple had laid out for him, an unwilling spectator to their erotic demonstrations. Her final, famous candid, which would be preserved in college history books and on the arms of tattooed men in years to come, was snapped surreptitiously in court by a journalist. It showed Dora steadfast, dressed extravagantly in a V-necked black gown, moments after her sentence was announced - death, by guillotine. Flocked by heartbroken spectators who stormed the benches, weeping tears of indignant fury, Hermann thought it was the first time he had ever seen her truly happy.

Like many middle-aged women who felt robbed in their youth by good-for-nothing men, Martha was captivated by _The Belle_ , and tried to coax Hermann into conversation on the topic whenever she could. But Hermann’s mind was occupied by a scandal of a more political nature, the alleged corruption of the highest ranks of the Social Democrat party, and the upcoming presidential election. Posters denouncing the villainous Barmat brothers, the Jewish businessmen who had seduced Germany’s heads of state, were crammed into their letterbox. Hermann threw them on the fire. He was more determined than ever to complete his studies before the start of the next academic year.

Newt had become a daily presence at Martha’s boarding house, and his already strained welcome was wearing thin. Martha by now considered him not merely a coward, but also morally bereft, as he believed in scandalous things like condoms and abortions. By March, he also believed he could one day take a still-living fetus and grow it separately from the mother in a tank, so that its development could be observed like a tadpole growing inside a pearl of frog spawn. His portions of _Gravitational Waves and the Dark Side of the Universe_ grew erratic and confrontational, his derision for the Board of Scientific Guardians as thick as molasses and dripping off every page.

“Tone it down, will you?” Hermann said, skimming one of his pages and censoring the parts he thought were superfluous. The paper was covered in black scribbles like a letter sent from the trenches. “I would like to have a job after all this, if you don’t mind.”

“Shut up Hermann,” Newt snapped. “Maybe you should take a look at your own work before criticising mine all the time.” He was writing three pages to Hermann’s every one, though the nature of his recent work meant that most of it was unusable. Between them they pieced together a hefty report, spanning nearly a hundred pages in small typed font, which Hermann stapled together and wrapped in brown paper to be sent to the Scientific Guardians at Munich University. Newt wanted to get to work on the following portion of _Ripples in Space-Time and How to Find Them_ right away, which would describe the special observatories needed to detect gravitational waves. “I’m on the brink of something huge,” Newt said. “I’m a genius.”

“You’re unbearable. Go home, get out of here. You look like you haven’t slept in three days.”

“Four. Who has time to sleep? You’ll sleep your whole life away.”

“ _Leave_. I’m not asking. And don’t come back until you’ve had some bloody rest or I’ll throttle you.”

Newt kicked over a chair and threw all his pencils on the floor and stomped off with a thunderous expression on his face. Hermann was left alone in his lab. He picked up Newt’s chair and his pencils and put them to rights. He caught a glimpse of Newt’s latest academic endeavour scrawled on a piece of paper. Unrelated to their current study, it appeared to be a proposal for growing human vital organs in the bodies of cows and sheep, and then transplanting these into the bodies of humans who suffered debilitating conditions of said organs. _Heart, liver, pancreas?_ He had illustrated his plan with a surprisingly artistic flair.

Hermann swept the plans aside.

At half-past-one the following morning, Hermann roused from his bed, crept into his laboratory and plucked the most daring pages from his own report. He sat down at his typewriter with the intention of creating a more palatable product. By the time he had finished, it was late afternoon and he had missed the postman, who only ventured by the way of Hard Hill Farm once a week because the terrain was notoriously difficult, and there were not enough people living there to make regular trips worthwhile. He hid the revised report in a drawer - _Proposals for the Study of Gravitational Waves by Dr Hermann Gottlieb._ Newt’s name was an afterthought confined to the bibliography. He wanted to keep it a secret, but when Newt found the old report they had given every waking moment to thrown foolishly in a wire waste paper basket, he tore the laboratory apart in search of the new one.

Hermann observed him with the exasperation of a weary parent of a toddler prone to tantrums. “Newton, be reasonable. If you read my revisions I’m sure you’ll agree that the bare bones of everything haven’t changed. The foundations are exactly the same, I’ve merely built up a more scientifically acceptable structure around them.”

“Acceptable, acceptable!” Newt screeched. “What happened to progress? What happened to _seizing the opportunity?”_

“It’s because of all that that I changed it! We’re at the mercy of the Board and I don’t want to risk any more cuts. We’ve worked too long and hard on this to fall at the last hurdle.”

“Darwin! Edison! Tesla!” Newton rattled off a list of scientific names. “Do you think they sat around waiting for some stuck-up capitalists to _allow_ them to change the world?”

“And I suppose you consider yourself among these great pioneers of science, don’t you?”

“ _I_ stand up and fight for what I believe in.”

“You’ll never work in academia again! Need I remind you who is funding this study?”

“The only reason you’ve gotten this far is because they’ve given you permission to. Even if we prove everything, do you really think they’re going to let you present it? Face it Hermann, you’re an embarrassment. That’s why they dumped you all the way out here, like garbage! You really think they’re going to let you march back in there and prove them all wrong? What do you have to lose?”

“If I turn in our original report at the end of the year they’ll think I’ve gone completely mad.”

“So what? Hide the truth because you’re scared they won’t like it?”

“We need more solid evidence of exactly what this research can shed light on. Of course, it’s not like _you_ have anything to lose. You’re an outcast. An _assistant pig keeper.”_

“I’d rather be an outcast than a fraud.”

“This study is too controversial for circumstantial evidence to suffice, and you know it. We need to find something _tangible.”_

“We don't have _time_ to find something tangible!”

“I know that!” Hermann yelled. “Do you think I like this any more than you do? Be sensible, Newton. If I present our wild theories about alien life at the university they’ll have me removed in a straitjacket, and all our hard work will have been for naught! It is better to be economical with the truth until we can acquire proper funding and time and resources.”

Newt turned away in disgust. “Fine. It’s your project. Do whatever you want,” he said.

“You’re impossible. You know I make a fair point.”

“Or maybe you’re still the same old Hermann. All you want is for someone to pat you on the head and say 'well done'!” Newt sneered. “It’s really pathetic. All these years and you’re still desperate to be daddy’s good little boy.”

The verbal jab sent Hermann sprawling.

"You go too far Newton."

"You've spent your whole life trying to get him to love you and what've you got to show for it? A cane and a limp!"

"Newton, I'm warning you. You take that back, or else…"

"Or else what? What's the great war hero Hermann Gottlieb going to do?"

It was a challenge, the proverbial throwing of the gauntlet. Newt raised his chin in bullish defiance, a smile on his face that with every inch said: 'You wouldn't dare'. Hermann couldn't stand it.

“Put your hands on the desk,” he said. “Spread your legs apart.”

Newt stood as still as a wild cat staring down a rival, trying to make up his mind between a stubborn 'make me!' or a gamble - to obey Hermann and call his bluff. He decided on the latter, and assumed the position like a schoolboy, full of bravado.

“What’re you going to do to me?” His voice was defiant, trembling with anticipation and tinged with the same fear that Hermann felt blooming inside of him, like a prey animal about to bolt. He spread his palm over the nape of Newt’s neck and urged his gaze downwards to the piles of paper that littered the desk.

“If you insist on behaving like a disruptive child,” Hermann hissed, “I’m going to treat you like one. Do you understand?”

“Bastard. You wouldn't."

He yelped when Hermann’s hand struck his backside, not with pain but with shock that Hermann had actually done it, as such an act seemed to demean both of them equally. Mortified, Hermann wrenched his hand away and grasped it with his other, as if it had been possessed by the devil.

Newt laughed at him. "Bravo! Congratulations, I hope you feel like a big man!"

"I haven't started yet."

"Then get on with it."

"You may live to regret those words."

"I'm shaking," said Newt scornfully.

Hermann spanked him again experimentally, then several more times, alternating between each cheek. Newt laughed between blows, taunting him. “I bet you’ve wanted to do this since the day we met. I bet you _fantasised_ about it.”

“Shut up.”

“I hope it saw you through those long winter nights, Hermann. All this time, you’ve been _desperate_ to get your hands on me - _ow! -_ bend me over - _OW!_ That _hurts!”_

“Good.”

“You’re pathetic,” Newt snarled. He arched his back, lifting his buttocks to meet Hermann’s palm.

“ _You’re_ pathetic. So full of your own importance. You’re nothing but a filthy farmhand. How does it feel Newton, to have fallen so low?”

“Don’t stop,” Newt said.

Hermann struck him across the sensitive place where the round of his ass met his thighs. A traitorous moan slipped past Newt’s lips.

“You’re a disgrace,” Hermann said.

Newt began to rock against the oak desk. He rolled one of his nipples through the fabric of his shirt and pulled on it. “Harder.”

“You little whore. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“ _Harder,”_ Newt urged, red-faced and breathing laboriously. His erection bulged thick and hard against the crotch of his trousers. Hermann spanked him again, kept his hand firmly on his backside and squeezed, encouraging the frantic back-and-forth movement of his hips. “Oh, oh Hermann, I’m going to, I’m _…”_

Hermann groped him roughly through his clothes, feeling his dick throb and twitch as he came. Newt moaned obscenely. He went limp atop the desk, panting, trembling all over as the impact of his orgasm washed over him in residual waves. Gradually he stood up, and before Hermann had the chance to gather himself he was seizing him by his collar and crashing their lips bloodily together. Newt’s hands were fumbling with his belt, ripping open the zip at the front of his trousers. Hermann seized him by the wrist, and with his other hand tangled in his hair bent him over with such force that the desk shrieked across the tiled floor and sent papers and pencils and bottles of ink flying everywhere.

His right hand spread across the side of Newt’s face, creeping over his ear into his hair as he held him down. He grabbed the elastic of his trousers and underwear and yanked them down. He wanted to expose him, to strip him as naked as his wide green eyes made him feel and map every inch of his body, the fading tan on his arms, his white throat, his freckles, the sinful trail of dark hair that led to his belly button. He wanted to possess him.

“ _Disgusting.”_ He thrust his cock against Newt’s burning buttocks. “Look at you. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

He pushed his thumb into Newt’s mouth. Newt sucked on it desperately.

“You’re such a - _oh, yes -_ such a harlot.” The tip of his dick rubbed hard against the rim of Newt’s hole; Newt moaned and pushed back against it. Hermann shivered with pleasure. “Oh Newton, _Newton,_ you’re wonderful,” he gasped, and erupted all over Newt’s exposed rear.

He looked around himself and at the essays he had poured his lifeblood into that were now scattered all over the floor. The button from the waist of his trousers, which had been torn loose by Newt in his frenzy, was touching the toe of his left shoe. Shame and despair formed a black hole in the pit of his stomach. The damning evidence of what he had done was spattered across Newt’s left buttock, running in rivulets along the crease at the top of his thigh and seeping into the elastic of his underwear.

“Oh dear,” he said. “Newton, I’m so - I don’t know what…”

Newt took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped himself down.

"I'm so sorry," Hermann said, tucking his soft penis back into his trousers with appropriate mortification. He felt Newt’s gaze wafting over him like a cloud of poison gas and, with his dignity lying in tatters, was tempted to throw himself at Newt’s mud-covered boots and beg for forgiveness - not only from him, but the countless others he had offended with his actions, his weeping mother, his father, and the God he no longer believed in.

“Feel better?” Newt asked.

“Please don’t talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s pretend this never happened.”

"Coward.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

Newt looked crushed. A glacial silence descended and formed an invisible wall of ice between them. Grabbing his cane and his coat, Hermann fled, ashamed that he had been the one to deliver the final low blow while Newton had held his peace in spite of Hermann’s come trickling down his thigh and the shape of his hands burning crimson on his ass. He took a tram into Bad Kissingen and stayed for two nights at a boarding house, which was extravagantly priced despite resembling a prison or sanatorium with white rooms made up of a single bed and wash basin. The toilets were communal.

He was afraid to go back to the boarding house. He felt humiliated, and scared by his overwhelming, primordial urge to _take_ Newton, to squeeze him so hard he left bruises and fuck him until he sobbed from pleasure and pain. To strip away every pretense of intellectual attraction from their friendship-rivalry and turn it into something dirty and primitive. But even primates did not mate with members of their own sex, Hermann thought miserably. He wanted to flee Bad Kissingen and never return. But even as he daydreamed about walking into the station and purchasing a one-way ticket for whatever train happened to be arriving next, he felt the pull of his research and the promise of his next big breakthrough. His two strongest, most familiar emotions - shame, and the ravenous desire for knowledge - clashed inside him.

With no money left and no clean clothes, Hermann eventually returned to the boarding house three days later. It was a weekday, which meant Newt’s morning would be spent stripping the fields of tufts of weeds until his fingers bled. Hermann almost believed he would be standing debauched in the lab where he had left him, with his trousers still pulled down at the back. Instead he found Martha thin and pale at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and fiddling with the rosary beads wrapped around her knuckles.

"The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence," she recited grimly, her miserable mouth a scarlet gash in her long, bloodless face.

"Whatever is the matter?" Hermann said.

"Look around, you'll see! We've been robbed."

Hermann looked around the kitchen with its green table and chairs, closed drawers and plates stacked neatly in their cabinet. Bewildered, he went out into the hallway and poked his head around the doors that led to Martha's living room and bedroom, with their furniture covered in white sheets. "It looks alright to me." He went upstairs. The two unused bedrooms looked as barren as ever, with turned-down sheets pulled tightly over the flat mattresses on old-fashioned steel bed frames. His own bedroom was similarly untouched. In a panic, he flung open the door to the loft - and found it decimated. Tables and chairs were tipped over, lab equipment had been picked up and hurled around the room. That microscope would take forever to properly recalibrate. Books and hand-written and typed notes littered the floor. Somebody had scribbled on his blackboard - hours of long division.

Hermann made a lop-sided dash back downstairs. "What on Earth happened?"

"It's not right,” Martha wailed. “I hate those bloody cons. They’ve no right dumping them all out here.”

"Newton did this?"

"He told me you'd asked him a favour so of course I sent him up… next thing I know there's a terrible banging and thumping loud enough to wake the dead. Well, what could I do? I hid in the cupboard.”

"You're not hurt?"

"I warned you about him. I warned both of you, but nobody ever listens to me! I can't bear it Hermann, really I can't. He's unnatural."

"I'm so sorry," Herman said. “Do you know where he went?"

Martha wiped her eyes on the corner of her apron. "I'm starting to suspect you're unnatural too," she said. "He's mad. You must be mad for taking up with him."

"I'll find another boarding house. I’ll never bother you again, if you’d like.”

"Oh don't go, Hermann, don't leave me." Martha started to sob. "It's impossible to find tenants these days; it's impossible to find work at my age! How will I make do without rent? I can't bear it. Sometimes I think I'm going to have a breakdown!"

"I'm going to see Herr Waldorf," Hermann said. "Don't cry now. There's no need. I'll bring you some meat for dinner. How does that sound?”

Martha stopped crying and said it sounded good.

Hermann, who had used the last of his coin on a taxi from the village to just past the farm, and had walked the last stretch of the steep trail to Martha’s house with his cane slipping through cracks in the dirt, went back the way he had came. He reached Hard Hill Farm with sweat trickling from the nape of his neck down the back of his cardigan and found Herr Waldorf, who informed him that Newt had gone AWOL two days ago. Mercifully, he had not reported this.

“It does ‘appen,” Herr Waldorf said, feeding oats to the dappled horses that pulled the ploughs. He was saving for a tractor. "Some of them get itchy feet, or they meet a girl, have a tumble in the hay barn and next thing you know they have to run off and get married.”

“I’m afraid it’s all my fault. You’re sure you haven’t seen him?”

“I’ll lend you another one, if you’d like.”

"No thank you," said Hermann, with mounting dread, "but you can lend us some fresh meat, if you don't mind. Martha's upset."

Herr Waldorf gave him a rabbit that he'd caught in a trap and a can of sweet peaches for Martha. He gave him a ride back to the house on his trap. On the way, Hermann was keenly aware of the old man shooting incomprehensible looks at him from within his mass of wild grey hair. “Jewish?” he grunted.

“Yes.”

Herr Waldorf nodded, neither approving nor disapproving. Feeling conspicuous, Hermann added, “Newton is Jewish too,” like a child who had been caught doing something wrong, trying to worm his way out of trouble by blaming another.

It took a whole week for news of Newton’s whereabouts to reach Hermann as he worked listlessly in his loft. He had been found, allegedly, wandering around in somebody’s garden, and was presumed to be drunk. The police had been called, and then the doctors, and he was taken to a sanatorium in Fulda a few hours away. Somehow, the information had circled around back to the small village near Bad Kissingen and the convicts who worked in the fields. Hermann suspected Chinese Whispers. He made the forty minute walk - an hour with his cane - halfway to the village, rode the rest of the way on the back of Herr Waldorf’s rickety trap, and took a train into the city.

The _Psychiatrische Klinik am See_ was a small but grand-looking building that sat opposite a leafy park in central Fulda. The park and the hospital were separated by a boating lake which was itself bordered by large oak trees, obscuring the faculty from the eyes of passers-by. The place seemed quite empty when Hermann stepped into the reception area which was split down the middle by a large wooden panel with arch-shaped windows. He went over to the windows and knocked on one until a grim-faced woman came over, annoyed at having been torn from her magazine. Hermann signed his name in a visitor's book, _Dr Hermann Gottlieb, of the University of Munich_.

One of the doctors came out to greet him. He introduced himself as Dr Walter Sommer. He was middle-aged, greying, with a large chin and a small upturned nose. “Our patients do not typically receive visitors.”

“That’s quite fine - I’m not a visitor,” Hermann said. “I’m here to pick up Dr Newton Geiszler. He has work commitments.”

“Ah, _Doctor Geiszler_. You know, we have patients here who think they are animals. One man believes himself to be a close personal friend of the King of England and claims to own every peat mine in Europe. It was almost a relief to have someone normal admitted to us. Of course, normal is a relative term.”

"There must be some mistake. Newton is a doctor of biology. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Richard McLaurin. A pioneer of research in marine life, molecular biology -"

"Regenerative medicine, evolution, genetic development." Sommer sighed. "He's told you too, has he? He’s a fantasist. He suffers delusions."

"I've read his work. A little unorthodox, perhaps, but sound. This is advanced science, not the - the ramblings of a madman."

"You would be surprised at how convincing they can be. That’s the thing about mad people - they don’t know they’re mad.”

“Dr Geiszler has a long history in the world of science.”

Sommer said, “There was a Dr Geiszler, I recall, before the war, causing a great deal of trouble for the Board of Scientific Guardians - not to mention the government. I was teaching at Berlin at the time. But that was eight years ago. There hasn’t been a Dr Geiszler at Berlin or anywhere else since then.”

"Are you certain?"

“There is a passing resemblance, I’m sure. But no accomplished doctor of biology would be caught marauding around town half nude, declaring himself the Messiah and frightening all the ladies.”

Hermann, who took pride in his own sensible nature, was moved by the absolute scientific certainty of Dr Walter Sommer, and the barest trace of a kind smile on his face that carried with it a sense of superiority, similar to the high-ranking members of the Board of Scientific Guardians. But he felt loyal to Newton and, upon hearing the outrageous allegations, felt insulted on his behalf. “And the real Dr Geiszler?” he snapped. “Did he simply disappear from the face of the Earth?”

“The Great War claimed many victims.” Sommer’s sullen eyes fell on Hermann’s cane.

"Does he have anybody who can look after him? Parents?"

"His parents are dead, as far as we know. Very few of our patients have relatives."

"A-A spouse, then?"

"Another concern. A number of our doctors suspect that Mr Geiszler is not the marrying sort."

“How would you know what sort he is?” Hermann snapped.

“Dr Gottlieb,” Sommer replied, “I didn’t expect a man of your intellect to be so easily taken in. A Munich University professor.”

"You've heard of me?"

"I'm a great admirer of your father's work. You know, Dr Gottlieb, there is a rumour that you're also not the marrying sort.”

“I’m married to my work.”

“A noble sentiment.”

Hermann narrowed his eyes at him. He said, “I would like to take my friend home now."

"That won't be possible. Mr Geiszler must be assessed - treated, if necessary. You have no right to take him. You have no authority here. We don't make special exceptions for _friends."_

"If you're accusing me of something you'd better damn well have the evidence to back it up," Hermann said lowly. "Because I'm warning you Doctor, I won't stand for it."

They regarded each other with silent contempt.

“Leave a number,” said Sommer eventually, “and I’ll have someone give it to him when he’s discharged, tell him you called. Mr Geiszler has no emergency contacts. He has no contacts to speak of. It will be up to him whether he decides to call you or not.”

Hermann wrote the number for Martha’s boarding house on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “Thank you for your compassion,” he said.

It was not Newt who called Hermann in the end, but the annoyed woman who manned the reception desk he had met one week prior. He travelled out to meet him the following day, and stood on the pavement outside the _Psychiatrische Klinik am See_ as Newt was marched like a convict through the hospital’s foreboding steel gates by an orderly. His hair was damp, and he had raw, red patches all over his body, as if somebody had scrubbed him vigorously with an old towel. Mr Geiszler, the tall orderly explained, was not permitted to shower alone, since he had attempted to escape by making his naked body slippery with soap and squeezing half-way through a small window at the top of the room. He was later caught trying to smuggle a bar of soap back to his room.

“I should’ve used the lard from the kitchen,” Newt said miserably.

“That’s hardly kosher, is it?” Hermann said. He flagged down a taxi and helped Newt inside. He had no luggage to speak of and had left the hospital with only the clothes on his back, which were several sizes too big and looked like they belonged to an older, burlier brother.

“It is,” Newt said. “I’m not going to eat it.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“Not really.”

“You’ve been there before?”

“Not there specifically. In Nuremberg they’d take me out of prison and throw me in the loony bin for a few weeks. Before that… there was a nursing home in Berlin that knew me. They let me lock myself up in there and knew not to give me the keys when I screamed for them.”

“And America?”

“America was - cool. I had a lot of fun there.” Newt looked down at his lap and started to unravel a loose thread from the sleeve of his _Psychiatrische Klinik am See_ cotton shirt. "Are you angry with me?" he asked quietly.

"What for?"

"I didn't tell you I was crazy."

Hermann had to look out of the window. "Was it all a lie, then?” he said. “The multiple doctorates, your celebrated stint overseas? Nuremberg prison? Us?”

"No! Everything I told you was the truth. How else could I have known you? How else could I know the things I do? I can describe the genetic structure of animals you’ve never heard of. I know every bone in the human body. The trapezoid, the trapezium, the capitate…”

"You don't have your credentials."

"I lost them."

"You lost them," Hermann repeated with a grim smile.

"I did! You believe me, don't you? Tell me you believe me."

"I want to. I don't know if I can."

“The scaphoid, the lunate, the radius…”

"Stop it. You're being hysterical. You’re upsetting yourself."

“I'm upsetting _myself_?" Newt shrieked. “I thought you were different, but you're not. You're just like everyone else!" He opened the car door and threw himself out. The taxi driver scrabbled at the wheel and veered onto the wrong side of the road before attempting to regain control of the vehicle, mounting the pavement, uprooting a small hedge and nearly crashing into a post box. Hermann sat back in shock, breathing hard. A sticky, scarlet pool was forming in a crease on his lap, and he realised his nose was gushing with blood.

He leapt out of the car and looked around for Newt, spying him down the street, on his feet and staggering down the pavement with passing families, properly-dressed businessmen and mothers with prams parting around him like the Red Sea. He looked dazed, with his workman’s trousers torn at the knees and stained with blood, but he was otherwise unharmed, and paid no attention to the nervous looks he was attracting, as if people threw themselves out of moving motorcars every day.

He tried to dart back out into the road when he saw Hermann approaching him like a storm. Hermann seized him by the shoulders and shook him until his glasses slid down his nose. "You idiot!" he shouted. "Do you want to die?"

"You don't care about me!”

“Oh for heaven's sake, of course I do!” Hermann bit his mouth into a thin, desperate line and cupped Newt’s face in both hands. “Of _course_ I do,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone like you. You make me question everything I’ve ever known. And I love that. And it _terrifies_ me. So don’t you dare for one moment think that I don’t care about you. Would you leave me alone?” He shouted at someone who had seen his bleeding nose and, noticing his cane, was trying to take him away by the arm - presumably to a hospital. An irate driver was leaning from the window of his motor car, shaking his fist. "Get off the road or I'll run you down!"

Hermann waved his cane menacingly at him, took Newt under his arm and led him away before somebody called for a doctor - or the police.

Back at the boarding house, Hermann went into the kitchen and made a cup of black tea with two lumps of sugar. He took all the knives out of Martha’s cutlery drawer and hid them. Then he returned to the spare upstairs room where he had deposited Newton and handed him the cup.

“Drink this. It’ll help.”

Newt slurped it loudly and spilled some on his shirt.

"Don’t leave me like this," he begged. "I don't want to be alone. I'm scared of myself."

"I won’t." Hermann sat down beside him on the bed and pulled him close. "I swear it."

“You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Everyone hates me. I’m crazy. I should be locked up.”

“Come now, you’re being silly. You don’t really think you’re crazy.”

“Haven’t you heard? Crazy people never do.”

Hermann watched as Newt drank his tea in small sips. There was no doubt the man was a scientific wonder. His mind was like a bonfire, fizzing and crackling with wild ideas. He was clearly educated. Was it possible for a madman to be educated? Hermann couldn’t see why not.

There was no denying he was Newton Geiszler, through and through.

 _But is he MY Newton?_ Hermann wondered. He cast his mind back to the last letter he had received from Newton before his arrest, which had been reported in scientific newspapers across the country. If Dr Newton Geiszler the half-mad genius, rabble-rouser and communist, had ceased to exist in the past eight years, could he really have been replaced by the man sitting before him? Hermann wished he had kept pictures, newspaper cuttings, anything that could help him pin down the appearance of his Newton. He recalled thick, round glasses, dark hair, and stained sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The more he tried to remember, the more the memories slipped away from him. He realised he could hardly remember Newton's face at all.

How convenient it was that, after eight years separated, the two of them should find themselves reunited.

If his Newton had come into contact with the Newt who was presently sipping morosely at his mug of sugary tea before him, either in prison or hospital awaiting psychological evaluation…

 _I’m letting my imagination run wild,_ Hermann thought.

The Newt in front of him started to weep. “It’s true what they say about me,” he said.

“What was that?”

“I told everyone I couldn’t support a phony war. I kept shouting it because I thought if I shouted loud enough I’d start believing it. But I can’t keep lying to myself. I didn’t want to go to war because I didn’t want to fight. Because I was scared.”

Newt’s nose started to drip into his teacup. Hermann took it from him and placed it on the bedside table. “I know,” he said, gently. “I know.”

“Lay down with me, Hermann.”

Hermann positioned himself stiffly on the small, flat mattress next to Newton, who shuffled onto his side so that he was facing the wall and curled up.

“Put your arm around me, please.”

“Like this?”

“Just like that.”

Goosebumps bristled on Hermann’s arms from the cold, but Newt radiated six inches of warm air at all times, and his body was even warmer. He was soft in the middle. Hermann put his palm on the lower part of his belly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to. But the longer I waited… I couldn’t. And then I found out I liked you. I didn’t want to destroy everything,” Newt said. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you looking at me like you are now. Like you feel sorry for me.”

“You’re sick,” Hermann said, lifting his head so he could speak softly against Newt’s ear. “That’s all. We’ll get you to a real doctor. Fix you up. You’ll see.”

“You don’t understand! This isn’t something you can take out of me. It’s in my brain. It’s me! _I’m_ the sickness!” Hermann seized Newts hands to stop him clawing at his own face. Newt threw him off, then threw himself onto his back and onto his opposite side in quick succession, so that he was looking at Hermann intensely. “I need you to understand that this is how it’s always going to be. I’m a timebomb. I can’t stop myself exploding. Sometimes I just want to destroy everything. Sometimes I’m gonna be really, really hard to love.

“If you want me, Hermann, you get all of me. There’s no part of me that I can cut out. That’s why I have to tell you all this, because you choosing me won’t mean anything if you don’t know what it is I’m asking you to choose. If you’re with me, I need you to accept that. And I need you to not try to fix me.”

“I’m with you, Newton.”

“Kiss me,” Newt said.

Hermann hesitated, and planted a soft kiss on his clammy forehead. His hair was greasy and stuck together in clumps and he had dark lines under both eyes, though he looked younger than Hermann had ever seen him.

“Don’t you want to kiss me?” he said.

“I do.”

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“I would like to make love to you, if you’d have me.”

Newt started trying to unbuckle Hermann’s belt, gave up, and thrust his sticky hand down his pants. Very gently, Hermann pulled it out again and placed it on Newt’s chest. “Not now,” he said. “You’re too fragile.”

“No I’m not,” Newt said. Tears sprung to his eyes. He scrubbed them away with a laugh. “OK, maybe I am a little.” He said, “I’m going to write to the University of Minnesota. There are people there who remember me. They’ll send me my doctorates. Letters. Pictures.” 

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

“I believe you.”

“But you doubt me. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me.”

It was true; Hermann’s scientific mind would not allow him to unconditionally accept that the two Newtons were one and the same. He said: “All things considered, I think it is very likely that you are the same Newton I knew. I may not be able to prove it, but as far as conclusions go, it’s an educated one.”

“You don’t think I murdered the real Newt Geiszler and stole his identity then?”

“Oh, don’t.”

“And that I came all the way here to seduce that dashing mathematician he always talked about, with my wicked wiles…”

“Stop it Newton, I mean it, you aren’t funny.”

“I did seduce you though.”

“You needn’t sound so full of yourself. It’s hardly a compliment. I’ve always had terrible taste in men.” He added, “How did you know, anyway? It baffles me how people always seem to _know_.”

“Does your family know?”

“I think so. I’ve never told them, but I think so.”

“It’s something about you. _Screams_ ‘confirmed bachelor’.”

“And what about you? Are you a confirmed bachelor?”

“I’m enlightened. Women, men. Unspecified genders maligned by boring old polite society.”

"Have you had a lot of sexual relationships then?"

"I've had sex," Newt said, "but not so much relationships. Not that I'm opposed to the idea. I'm enlightened. But things never seemed to work out that way."

“Don’t start crying again. Please don’t, I’m awful at comforting people. What’s wrong?”

Newt rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Nothing,” he said, and started sobbing. “It’s really nothing.”

The crying, Hermann learned, was a positive sign - symptom of Newt’s waning madness following a prolonged period of hysteria. He returned to Hard Hill Farm three days later, pale and whisper thin, and was given a week’s leave on compassionate grounds. For the period, Hermann took an executive decision and brought him back to the house, as Martha had taken her own compassionate leave in the form of a long stint at her sister’s house in Schweinfurt. Even in the throes of depression, Newt was adept at looking after himself in the way very young children with neglectful parents learn to look after themselves. He slept most of the day, only rising to eat or wash when needed or when Hermann insisted on it. Often Hermann heard him sobbing in the spare room and would have to fight the urge to try to make him better. Sometimes when he cried he said he despised himself. Other times he cried for no reason at all, only, he said, to expel the sickness through physical means.

“Try not to think of yourself as sick,” suggested Hermann, as if it would change anything.

The period lasted about a week, after which Newt began to get up and dress himself of his own accord. Hermann heard him slamming drawers in the kitchen one morning, and went downstairs to find him sat at Martha’s dining table, chomping on a large loaf of bread as if it was a chocolate bar. Retrieving a knife, Hermann took the loaf from him, cut him a slice and put it on a plate.

“I’ve had a brilliant idea. I’m inspired,” Newt said. “Pre-sliced bread. Comes in a bag.”

“I don’t think much of that. What’s wrong with slicing it yourself? It only takes a few seconds.”

“The slices would be all even. Not like this.” He held up the piece of bread Hermann had cut, which was shaped like a wedge doorstop - thin at one end, thick and chunky at the other.

“Let me know how that wondrous idea turns out.”

“Did you send the report?” Newt asked.

“I did.”

“Which one?”

“The economical one.”

Newt looked sullen with his mouth full, cheeks bulging like a hamster. “You were right,” he said grimly, after swallowing. “They’d never have believed us anyway.”

“Now you jolly well see here. Just because I opted for the safe report doesn’t mean I’ve given up. We still have three months funding left. I looked at the books and I think we might be able to stretch it to four. Martha’s willing to knock a few rentenmarks off the rent, as long as you do a few odd jobs for her.”

“I’m working two jobs as it is!” Newt cried. “Fine, but I want a proper credit. _Forging A Key to Unlocking the Secrets of the Unknown Universe_ by Dr Hermann Gottlieb and Dr Newton Geiszler.”

“Dr Hermann Gottlieb _with_ Dr Newton Geiszler.”

“ _And,”_ Newt insisted.

“Oh, have it your way. But you have to edit last year’s work.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a better writer than me.”

“You know just what to say,” Newt grumbled. He stuffed the crust of his bread into his mouth and waved for the rest of the loaf and a bread knife. Hermann handed it to him and found him a piece of cheese in the larder that he hoped Martha hadn’t been saving.

“We really ought to get you back to Herr Waldorf. He’s been awfully good about all this.”

“Jewish solidarity.”

“How do you know he’s Jewish?”

“He’s not practicing. Lapsed, I think. You’d get on.”

“I don’t think Herr Waldorf is the sort of man who gets on well with anyone.”

“You’ve got a lot in common.”

Hermann didn’t mind the ribbing. Newt was cutting the bread and making a clumsy job of it. The too-thin slices turned to crumbs on the table. He abandoned the bread knife and started eating with his hands again as if he hadn't eaten in a week, swallowing painfully before he had sufficiently chewed.

“Pre-sliced bread, Hermann!” he declared. “It’s going to be the next best thing!”

In later years, Hermann looked back on the summer months of his second year in Bavaria as a time of great sexual awakening, maybe the second or third of his life - the first being the most rudimentary sex education and the expectation that he would grow up to sleep with women and have children with them, and the second being the two electric minutes spent under the willow tree with the strange man in Cambridge. The mental chaos that had taken hold of Newt throughout March and April was banished to memory, and he shook off the vortex of depression and crying fits as a dog shakes seawater from its fur. He took to providing a distraction of a different kind, pinning Hermann to the wall of the loft with little strength and accosting him with kisses in the middle of the working day.

“We simply - must - get back to work!”

“How can I work when you look so devastatingly handsome covered in chalk dust?”

“You’re shameless. You’re a terrible distraction.”

“I can’t help being distracting.” Newt sat on Hermann’s desk and leaned back on his hands, exposing the trail of fuzz that crept up from the elastic of his pants. Hermann nudged his legs apart, stood between them and grabbed him. His fingers slid under the hem of Newt’s shirt and squeezed the small, soft mounds that covered both of his hips, curving plumply over the top of his belt. Newt buried his face in Hermann’s shoulder and moaned hotly against the side of his neck. He had been seducing Hermann with a view to sex for weeks, sometimes without knowing it, arriving to work with the top three buttons of his shirt undone and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and bending over desks to write without sitting down, showing off the roundness of his ass. Hermann had put off propositioning him like he had put off thinking about how, in just a few short weeks, his placement in the countryside would be exhausted and he would have to return to Munich.

They leapt apart, blushing like naughty schoolchildren, when Martha knocked on the door and told Hermann she was going for a walk into the village.

“Very good, thank you, goodbye Martha,” he said with his back to her, scribbling sums on his blackboard with unnecessary vigor. Newt let out an ugly snort of laughter.

“Get your rotten, dirty shoes off my furniture!” Martha said. She handed Hermann a letter with a return address for somewhere in Massachusetts, America, battered him with her feather duster and bustled off before he could protest that he didn’t know anybody in Massachusetts. Then it dawned on him, and he offered the envelope to Newt.

“I want you to read it,” Newt said.

This was more foreboding than if Newt had taken it in hand. He looked nervous, which in turn made Hermann nervous as he wondered what the envelope could contain to give Newt cause to feel nervous. He opened it and tipped the contents into his hand: a yellowed copy of something that looked like a classroom register with a long list of names, including Newt’s, and a letter written in cursive.

“What’s it say?” Newt asked.

“You are Newton Geiszler. You attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1908 and left in 1911 with your second doctorate. You are an incredible scientist. You are also possibly insane.”

“All the best scientists are.”

“It’s signed _Professor August Brooks._ ”

Newt smiled. “He liked me.”

“I don’t think you’re insane, Newton. Not most of the time.”

“Are you OK with that? With me being sane just most of the time?”

“Are _you_ OK with it?”

“I have to be,” Newt said.

It was horrifically unfair, Hermann thought, that Newton had been sabotaged by some mysterious illness that festered deep inside his brain like a benign tumour that at any moment could turn malignant. He struggled to come to terms with what Newton had learned to accept long ago - that for all his brilliance, he could never rise to the top of a proper scientific career due to the uncontrollable bouts of madness that upset his life.

Sensing that Hermann felt sorry for him, and being the sort of person who despised being felt sorry for, Newt said cheerfully: “I’ve got a theory, about my head. I’m so ingenious and inventive and clever -”

“And humble and modest…”

“- and unusual that it’s just too much for a regular human body to handle. I’m so full of ideas, you see, my brain can’t fit it all in. It builds up and explodes, like putting too much air into a balloon.”

“You’re preposterous,” Hermann said.

Newt, who usually contained his company to the upper quarters of the boarding house so not to offend Martha (who only ventured upstairs occasionally to bother Hermann or to dust the low ceilings and pummel the beds with her carpet beater), went downstairs to make lunch. While he was gone, Hermann checked inside the envelope for anything he might have missed, a photograph of Newt in his university days or a copy of his credentials, but found that it was empty. This did not surprise him, as universities did not typically hand out the records of former without due process. After thirteen years, they might have even misplaced them.

Newt came back into the room with sandwiches. He picked up the essay Hermann had been working on and skim-read it. It was a concluding essay detailing the potential of using space-time irregularities to study life forms outside of Earth.

“Are you sure you’re alright with this?” Newt asked.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it. Which means the Board will hate it.”

“I don’t think they’ve ever really liked me,” Hermann said. “Dr Gottlieb - senior - still has a lot of influence, even if he’s retired. I’ve always been rather a disappointment to him. I consider it one of my finer qualities.” He added, slyly: “You don't think I'm Board material anyway."

Newt held him firmly by the shoulders and looked him meaningfully in the eye. "Hermann," he said, "you will _never_ be a Guardian. I mean that as a compliment."

"I know.” With a little sadness, Hermann thought that he had always known, but, like so many other unchangeable things, he had refused to accept it. It was almost a relief to hear it.

“ _Fuck them,”_ Newt said savagely. “Crypto-fascist, backwards-thinking, bourgeois bastards! Science doesn’t need to be protected from crazy ideas. There’s still so much we don’t understand! They want to take everything we already know and draw a line under it and say ‘that’s enough’. That’s why they hate you. They’re scared of you.”

“Me and my crazy ideas.”

“Exactly.”

"It may be unorthodox, but it's good work. I have confidence in my calculations. Yours too. We might actually pull this off." Hermann began to grin with boyish excitement, which was an expression so foreign to him that it felt like a deliberate crack appearing in a perfectly polished piece of china. He felt a surge of reckless bravery, and almost proposed _it_ _,_ but quickly dispatched the idea. Then, disgusted by his own cowardice, he blurted, “You might stay the night. We could get an early start tomorrow.”

“I thought you objected to me invading your _inner sanctum.”_

“It’s a bit late for that, but I appreciate the thought. I suppose that’s a yes?”

"I really am a bad influence on you.”

He left at dinner time because it was the last Friday of the month and he and the rest of the men who worked on Hard Hill Farm had to go into town and sign their names in a big book to confirm they weren't cheating on their probation. Hermann wondered whether he should have instructed Newt to come back at midnight rather than a vague 'tonight' - then wondered if that might have been too forward, as midnight carried a promise that a simple 'tonight' did not. Tonight was safer. But the not knowing when Newt would arrive, and then, later, not knowing whether he would arrive at all, troubled Hermann.

He took a cold bath. While he did so, he heard Martha coming in from her long walk. He recognised her busy footsteps about the kitchen and in her rooms. Then she shouted up to him; the bell that hung over the front door tinkled again, and she was gone. She had been leaving the house more often now that the days were growing longer. Most of the time she spent in the yard with nails sticking out of her mouth, hammering away at a loose window frame or the new run she was making for her remaining chickens, whose eggs were treated like gold thanks to a fox that had managed to slip into the coop one night and massacred half the laying flock, as well as their only rooster. Other times she would depart without explanation, and would be delivered the following day on the back of a donkey led by Herr Waldorf, like the Virgin Mary.

Hermann went into his room and considered his wardrobe. He turned on the light, then lit the oil lamp on the chest of drawers, then turned off the light. His plain, sterile room was bathed in a lustrous orange glow. He identified with it deeply.

He changed into his pyjamas, felt foolish and changed out of them again. At half-past-ten something started tapping intermittently on his window pane, and he opened the curtains to find Newt stood roguishly in the yard like Romeo in the Capulet’s rose garden, throwing pebbles.

“The back door’s locked,” he said as Hermann opened his window. “Let me in!”

“Martha’s gone off with the only key. You’ll have to climb up.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m getting a running start.”

The trellis, adorned with creeping clematis, began halfway up the wall where the windows ended. A taller man might have been able to jump and cling on and use what upper body strength he had to heave himself up until he could get a proper foothold. Newt had to climb onto the windowsill first.

“Be careful!” Hermann said. He grabbed Newt by the hand as soon as he was within reach and hauled him head-over-heels through the second storey window. He landed, breathless - messy hair, freckles, glasses crooked, shirt ripped open, one shoe hanging off. Hermann could have taken him right there on the bedroom floor.

Instead he said: “Would you like to take a bath?”

Martha’s large house was one of the few in rural Germany blessed with indoor plumbing, and it was this that had kept her afloat during the economic crisis, as there had been a few wealthy visitors willing to pay for the luxury.

Newt took off his boots and shut the door behind him. Hermann heard him running the taps as sparingly as possible, so that it must have been little more than a trickle filling the tub.

He wondered if they would keep up the pretense of Newt sneaking into his bedroom at ten o’clock at night for the purpose of an early start to the following day’s work, and that alone. He knew that Newt, with all his intelligence, would not have overlooked the significance of the secrecy, nor the importance of meeting with him under the comfortable cloak of darkness. His room was pristine, illuminated moodily by oil lamps instead of the large, overbearing bowl-shaped bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was painfully obvious Hermann had been waiting for him. It was painfully obvious what he was hoping for.

 _Don’t do this, Hermann. You won’t be able to turn back if you do._ It was his father’s voice, not his own, that Hermann was hearing. He dashed over to the window, which was swinging on its latch, slammed it shut and locked it. Presently another thought occupied him, which was that perhaps Newt had detected his intentions and was ignoring them, and perhaps the reason he had not teased him was to spare his feelings by providing the gift of plausible deniability.

The thought of giving his heart to Newton only to have it wordlessly given back was more unbearable than the condemnations of a thousand nations. When Newt reappeared at his door and crossed the terrible line between landing and bedroom, there was not room in Hermann’s body for any emotion except immense, crashing relief.

“Alright,” Newt said with determination. “Let’s do this.”

"Good God. You sound like you're going to war. Hardly puts one in the mood."

"Then I'll put you in the mood."

“Come here.”

Hermann held his face with both hands and kissed him shyly, as if he hadn’t spent the past three weeks kissing him.

“Don’t turn off the light," Newt said. "I want to see you."

His hair was damp, the dirt had been scrubbed from his glasses and he smelled strongly of lavender, as if he had worn out a whole months’ soap rations in one go. Hermann, who had spent several hours worrying about how to properly commit the act of undressing in front of Newton, decided to get it over with, and sat on his bed and took off his trousers, exposing the dark, glassy scar that zig-zagged up his left leg. "Try not to look at it," he advised. "It is very ugly, but there’s really nothing I can do about it.”

Newt dropped to his knees between Hermann’s spread legs and caressed the scar with his fingers, and then with his lips, from his bony ankle to the curve of his knee. It was the ultimate act of submission, and stole the words from Hermann’s throat. Humbled, he lifted Newt’s chin with his finger, then lifted him further still, so that he rose to meet him on the bed. He let Newt press one hand against his chest and push him so that he was lying on his back with Newton above him in a way that felt so natural that he barely registered that this was what he had longed for Newton to do to him, not just as an expression but as a physical act, to push him so that he could yield.

Newt grinned, insolent with the knowledge that he had Hermann, and perhaps had always had him, long before the day he appeared by chance at Martha's door, sweaty and sunburned. He had lured him, hooked him like a fish, and Hermann felt as though he'd been feeding him slack for the past ten years. How easily he had been reeled in.

He started to take off Newt’s clothes. First his shirt, with baggy sleeves rolled up to the elbows, then the T-shirt he wore underneath, his trousers - Newt helped - and finally his underwear, so that he was completely naked. He was pale under his clothes. His fading tan was shaped like a V on his chest. Far from the fiery passion that had seized him in the loft just a few weeks ago, when he had bent Newton over and pummelled him in a fit of urgency, Hermann wanted to take his time stroking and squeezing him. He traced the soft outline of his body from his hips up to his chest, which he cupped with both hands, rubbing his nipples with his thumbs.

Newt's shoulders began to move up and down with increasing speed as his breathing grew laboured and his nipples tightened into hard little peaks.

"Is that - alright?" Hermann asked.

"You don't have to ask."

"I’m nervous.”

Newt began to tug at Hermann’s shirt, his socks, his underwear, until he was naked too.

“I’m ready,” he said breathlessly. “I’m ready. Do you want me?”

“Yes. Oh yes, Newton.”

“How do you want me?”

“On your back, let me lay you down. That’s it. Spread your legs apart.”

Hermann took a handful of petroleum jelly from a pot on his chest of drawers and spread it down the length of his dick. Oil, he supposed, would have been more romantic, but it was expensive. He rocked against Newt, barely breaching him, opening him up little by little while Newt shivered and gasped and clung to the bed. Eventually, with precision, Hermann slid fully into him and stayed there, perfectly still, with Newt’s legs wrapped around his waist.

“Let me get used to it… OK. You can go.”

“Would you -” Hermann’s mouth felt dry, “would you ask me to? Nicely?”

It was a brave request, one that Hermann himself would have refused - but Newt just grinned wickedly, threaded his fingers together at the back of Hermann’s neck, and whispered in his ear: “Please fuck me, Dr Gottlieb. I want you to come in me and make me your whore.”

“Oh Newton,” Hermann breathed. “Thank you.”

Newt laughed aloud, then inhaled sharply as Hermann began to thrust slowly in and out of him, trying to find the most pertinent angle. He fell into a precise rhythm, teasing Newt with the tip until he squirmed, then sliding in as deep as he could go - again and again and again, until Newt was whining, bracing his splayed thighs against the mattress and bucking his hips in desperation.

“Don’t tease me.”

“Turn around,” Hermann said, pulling out of him. “I want to try it from behind.”

“You’re so bossy.” Newt scrambled onto his hands and knees and reached back with one hand to spread himself. Hermann applied a fresh coat of vaseline to his dick and pushed it back into Newton slowly, watching as every inch was sheathed inside. Newt kept still as he allowed Hermann to penetrate him. Inside he was molten hot, quivering and twitching. Hermann started to fuck him at the same time he started to squeeze and then grab the soft fat that covered each hip, using the sensitive little mounds to yank Newt's buttocks back as he thrust into him, so that he met him halfway. Then, as Hermann withdrew, he tightened his grip and pushed Newt forward so that his dick almost popped out of him completely. Then he pulled him back again, and repeated the motion.

Newt's elbows buckled and he collapsed onto the bed, drooling onto the sheets with his ass in the air while Hermann fucked him on his dick like a toy. His cock began to drip humiliatingly.

Hermann watched the place where his and Newt's bodies were connected and the way Newt's hole seemed to cling to his dick, so that every time he pulled back, Newt's rim was tugged back a little too. Hermann put both hands on his ass and, using his thumbs, spread him wide open. Newt wailed with embarrassment and clutched the pillow to his face. A damp patch had formed on the sheets between his legs. Hermann shushed him reassuringly. “You’re beautiful.”

“Slower,” Newt rasped. “Please, not so hard.”

Hermann, who had not realised how brutally he was fucking him, squeezed his hips apologetically and relaxed his pace. He marvelled at how easily Newt opened up for him. How soft and warm he felt inside. It was perfectly natural, Hermann thought, with no scientific explanation. It did not require a scientific explanation, it simply was, in a way nothing else in the universe simply was. He was filled with a sense of serenity that came with revelation. He was born to make love to Newton.

“Newton, Newton, Newton…” Hermann found he was moaning his name over and over like a mantra.

“Don’t stop.”

“I’m close. Should I…?”

“No… inside me… want you to come in me.”

Hermann groped for Newt’s arm, pulled him onto his knees and captured the corner of his lips in a graceless kiss, slipping two fingers into his mouth as he did so. Newt sucked on them eagerly, a gesture of absolute obedience, and with that Hermann was coming deep inside of him, and squeezing and pulling the inside of his cheek.

The force of his orgasm sent shudders through his body. Immediately the red mist began to clear from his mind and he worried that he had humiliated Newt by coming in him while pulling on his cheek. But Newt was delirious, pushing back on Hermann’s softening erection in a futile effort to keep it inside of him. Hermann took pity on him and started to stroke his hard, neglected cock, which was as wet as his tongue.

With his free hand, he cupped Newt’s chin and tilted his head.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “I want to see your face.”

“M’gonna come,” Newt moaned. He had a red, thumb-shaped mark on his cheek where Hermann had squeezed him. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…” He grabbed Hermann’s hand and began to frantically move it up and down his dick, his body growing ever tighter like a wound-up spring, until finally a choked cry escaped him and he spurted messily between Hermann’s fingers. Hermann watched him as he came, drinking in every drop. He went limp afterwards, and Hermann had to make an effort not to be unceremoniously pushed over.

The question as to what to do after the fact had not occurred to Hermann, and he found himself floundering more than he had done before the intercourse. Upon his completion with Vanessa, so many years ago, he had quickly put his clothes back on, buttoned his shirt all the way up to his neck and collected his briefcase, as if finishing a business transaction. Such an act seemed inappropriate with Newt, who had Hermann’s come trickling out of him and bruises rising in the shape of Hermann’s hands on his buttocks. While he thought, Newt took off his glasses, crawled under the covers of the bed and, still sticky with come, snuggled into Hermann’s pillow.

“I can hear your brain,” he mumbled. “It’s saying ‘lay down and go to sleep’.”

“Don’t you want to clean up?”

Newt snored deliberately. With some difficulty, Hermann laid down next to him at a distance, his leg aching. Newt patted around for him with one arm and pulled him close, so that he was poised delicately with his cheek pressed against the light fuzz on Newt’s chest.

No sooner had Hermann thought that there was no way he could possibly sleep in such a position than he must have dozed off, because when he came to it was light outside. The cold, bright morning sun cast its long rays across Newton’s sleeping body, illuminating every freckle on his shoulders and back. Hermann thought of all the doors that were closed to him - marriage, children, a legacy - and didn't give a damn about any of them. He felt more like himself than he had ever done, as if by sleeping with Newton he had uncovered something about himself that was always there but that he had never ventured to look for. One month ago, the thought of being seen by Newton terrified him. Now he wanted him to see him. He wanted to wake up every day next to him in a world that would turn it's back on him for choosing him, and choose him regardless.

Newt opened his eyes and met Hermann’s stare with a lazy smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here when I woke up.”

“Are you pleased to see me?"

"Yeah. I am."

Hermann snaked an arm around his waist, then dipped his hand lower, pressing protectively over his swollen asshole.

"How is it?"

“It hurts."

“I’m sorry.”

“I like that it hurts. Whenever I can’t sit down today I'll think about having your cock in me." He picked up his glasses from the bedside table and put them on. “Now I can see you.”

“I look dreadful in the morning. I have terrible bags under my eyes.”

“You always look like that. Can I ask you something? If I wasn’t the real Newt - Newt number one? If I was just - just me, the way I am. Would we still be like this now?”

“I don’t know if you are the real Newt,” Hermann said. “I just think it’s highly likely. But I suppose that answers your question, in a way.”

“In a way,” Newt repeated.

Hermann stroked his hair. “Whatever could’ve happened to the real Newton?”

“He could’ve died, maybe. There was an outbreak of cholera in prison. Influenza. A lot of people died.”

“Must you be so morbid? Here I was thinking of whispering sweet nothings in your ear all day.”

“Mm. You still can.”

“Help me up, and pass me my cane. I’ll make the tea. You always let it brew for too long.”

They finished _Black Hole Blues and other Outer Space Mysteries_ that morning, Hermann still in his pyjamas and Newt in his underwear with one of Hermann’s vests thrown on for decency’s sake. Newt sat on a cushion in the lab and squirmed occasionally with discomfort, prompting Hermann to go downstairs and make him tea and coffee and soft-boiled eggs with the tops cut off.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, kissing Newt’s yolk-stained face.

Newt blinked his big eyes at him, the picture of innocence.

They changed into their day clothes before noon, just as Martha was delivered back to the house by Herr Waldorf on the back of his trap. She had no idea that Newton had stayed the night. Still, Hermann was afraid to greet her. He was suddenly fearful that some part of him would give him away, that her sneaky intuition would tip her off to his crumpled clothes and the rosy colour in his cheeks, and that she would remark “you’re glowing!” as if one woman to another.

But all she said was: “A telegram for you, from that fancy university of yours.”

Hermann took the paid-by-the-word note and read grimly: he had been summoned to Munich for a meeting with the chairman of the Board.

Newt meanwhile slipped out the back door, only for Martha to catch sight of him through the kitchen window as he jogged through the yard, scaring the chickens and sending them flying in a flurry of feathers. She made a disgusted noise. She was too holy to throw him out for good, but took to hiding her good china - bone white teacups adorned with blue cornflowers - whenever he stopped by.

“He _is_ a criminal,” she reminded Hermann. “And a Jew.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Hermann said. “Anyway, I’m a Jew.”

“Oh, but you’re different. I didn’t mean you. _”_

Dr Karl Whittman was the acting chairman of the Board of Scientific Guardians - based in Munich, though the group had members all over the country. He had been appointed the role five years ago by Lars Gottlieb, who, despite being mostly retired and living comfortably in Austria, still retained the official title of chairman, and made special appearances at conferences and fancy dinners. He had a PhD in human biology and gave lectures on the subject.

He was seated behind a large oak desk when Hermann arrived at his office, sweat-soaked and grimy after a long, hot train ride. He smiled warmly, spread his big red hands apart and said: “Congratulations.”

Hermann, who had been expecting a drubbing, said: “Excuse me?”

“How would you like to take up a senior position at the University of Berkeley in California? They’re after fresh staff in the applied mathematics department. The university has connections with the Board; they got in touch with us and we recommended you.”

“I-I’m flattered,” Hermann said, “but I don’t quite understand. Certainly I have confidence in my abilities, but my last report… Well, I presumed you wanted to discuss it.”

Whittmann chuckled. “You always did have a flair for the unusual. Gravitational waves! I almost expected you to go the full nine yards and start prattling about alien life. You’re a mathematician, Hermann, not an astronomer. Don’t you think it’s time you got back to some _real_ work?”

“My reasoning was sound. You can’t deny the progress we’ve made. A little more time…”

“You don’t have any more time. Your funding runs out at the end of June and it will not be renewed. It’s already been decided. Get your head out of the clouds. The Board doesn’t have any more money to spare on frivolous projects.”

Something about the word _frivolous_ struck Hermann like a sterilised needle. He declared: "My father’s behind this."

"He has arranged overseas accommodation for all his children."

“He’s gone too far this time. I’ve held my tongue long enough for the sake of securing a position in this committee and frankly it’s not worth it. Where is he? I have some choice words for him."

"That won't be possible; he's gone."

"Gone? Where?"

"Halfway to England by now, I expect. He’s attending a conference in East Anglia. Your brothers have already made arrangements for transfer to Belgium and France. Your sister, I know, is doing quite well in Egypt.”

“The new term starts in two months. You’ll want to find accommodation for yourself before then. We’ll take care of your travel costs.”

“Now see here. I haven’t agreed to this.”

“Be reasonable. It's an excellent position. You always said you wanted to occupy a senior role.”

"Yes, but on my own merits!"

"It was your failures, Dr Gottlieb, that convinced us to fund your studies in Bad Kissingen, and you were more than happy to take up that offer."

"My failures?"

“You’re a phenomenal scientist,” Whittmann admitted. “But you've always been plagued by rumours."

"Nothing was proven about me.”

"Anyway, this is a great opportunity for you. Make a fresh start somewhere nobody knows your name. Consider the economy. Theirs is booming - ours is practically dead in the water. Consider politics. Consider your background.”

“My _background_ is my business.”

“If only that were true.”

“I have commitments here. Friends. I can’t simply up and leave. Dr Geiszler…”

“I noticed his name in your work. God knows where you dragged him in from - the gutter? You do your reputation more harm than good, associating with him. I heard he went loony in prison.”

“Newton is exceptional. He’s worth a hundred of any of you.”

Dr Karl Whittmann sighed. He pinched his large, rubbery brow. “Go to California, Hermann,” he said. “We really do have your best interests at heart. Go to California and find yourself a wife.”

One month later, Hermann and Newt stood side by side on the platform at Bad Kissingen station, waiting for the train that would take him to Frankfurt and, from there, to a ferry in Hamburg. Newt was oddly formal in a ratty tweed suit complete with waistcoat and tie. It was the only suit he owned and he had worn it to his court martial ten years prior. Hermann had on a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses connected with a gold metal chain. He carried with him only one suitcase, plus a large folder stuffed full of various papers. It was a sobering thought that the main accomplishments of his thirty-six years of life could be condensed so neatly into two small containers: his doctorate, a collection of essays, some clothes that had been gnawed by moths, and a bundle of letters from his back-and-forth with his sister Karla.

“You might’ve asked me to stay,” Hermann said, eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Would you? If I asked you to run away with me right now, would you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask,” Newt said.

“I’m still not sure if I’m doing the right thing.”

“You’re doing the smart thing. That’s the Hermann thing.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to leave quite a lot of myself behind. I’ve grown rather fond of you.”

“No! Really?”

“It may come as a surprise.”

The Number Fourteen to Frankfurt pulled into the station in a cloud of black smoke. Crowds of shabby commuters began to criss-cross over the gap between the carriage and the platform edge.

Hermann tucked an envelope into Newt’s breast pocket.

“A letter,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s so late. Don’t open it until I’m gone. It’s frightfully sentimental.”

“You won’t forget about me, will you?”

“I could never forget you.”

Tears welled in Newt’s eyes. He was determined not to cry, as he had already done so three hours ago while the two of them were making love in Hermann’s boarding house bedroom, stripped bare of all its belongings. “We were _so close,”_ he said.

“The world isn’t ready to face the reality of the probable existence of alien life. Goodness knows we have enough trouble to contend with right now.”

“I’m going to prove it, even if it takes me twenty years. I don’t care what anybody else says. _Scientific Study: Title Pending_ is going to change the world.”

“Look after yourself, Newton,” Hermann begged. “And be careful. I look at what our country is becoming and I don’t like it.”

“I’m always careful,” Newt said.

“You mad, Jewish communist.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Hermann threw his arms around Newt and held him tight. Newt returned the gesture. People on the platform around them shuffled around and pretended not to notice the unusual sight of two men in their thirties engaged in such an emotional farewell. The train sounded its horn and the conductor, dressed in a smart blue uniform and shiny blue cap, blew his whistle and shouted: “Last call!”

“Get out of here,” Newt said, “or I won’t be able to let you go.” 

“I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

“I love you.”

“Oh Newton,” Hermann said. “I’m going to miss you desperately.”

He picked up his suitcases, struggling in his right hand with his cane, and boarded the train. He was immediately followed by a small crowd of dressed-up men and women and their children, and Newt lost sight of him for a moment in the smoky interior of the carriage. The doors closed. The conductor in his smart blue uniform walked up and down the platform, looking for any last-minute stragglers who might have missed the last call. He looked at Newt and gestured towards the train; Newt shook his head and stepped back. Through a small sliding window on the side of the carriage Hermann had boarded, he caught sight of a man in a domed black hat being pushed rudely aside, and Hermann’s face appeared.

He struggled with the latch, but it was stuck, and the sliding window refused to budge. So Hermann pressed his fingers to his lips and then pressed them against the window, looking at Newt. Newt clutched his chest and stumbled around, as if the small gesture had knocked him for six, and grinned when he saw Hermann laughing silently behind the glass pane. The train’s horn blared, thick plumes of smoke billowed into the air, and its pistons began to move circularly, slowly at first, then faster. A look of panic flashed across Hermann’s face. He steeled himself quickly, took off his glasses and wiped the corners of his eyes with his thumb. Then he was gone.

Newt climbed the stone staircase that led to the bridge that crossed over the train tracks, connecting the platform to the station, and stood for a while with his elbows on the railings. Hermann’s letter crinkled in his pocket. Passing him, the conductor said: “No more trains today.” Newt said _thanks_ and carried on over the bridge. He had some money to go towards a taxi back to the small village outside of Bad Kissingen, where he would remain for at least two months until his probation finally came to an end.

The sun was setting in a red, fishscale sky. Newt took off his dented hat and hung it from a metal spike at the end of a wall. He walked past a greengrocers and a boycotted bookshop with graffiti scribbled on the door. He decided to take the long way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this story all the way back in December, but unfortunately I got extremely sick for a number of months and didn't have the chance to pick it up again until recently. It felt wonderful to write again, though I was out of practice and maybe it shows - I think the pacing of this story is a little clunky. But I loved writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you want, please leave a comment! They mean the world to me.


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